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HARRIET HALE RIX 



BY THIS SIGN WE 
CONQUER 

BY 
HARRIET HALE RIX 




The Second Lesson in the Course on Christian Healing, 
Delivered in Los Angeles, October, 1917 



Published by 
THE MASTER MIND PUBLISHING CO., 

649 South Flower Street 
Los Angeles, Cal. 



"f?Z- 4-0/ 



Copyright 1919, by 
The Master Mind Publishing Co. 

By * rttftf £T 
The Ihlte Hnw. 

NOV 12 J819 




INTRODUCTION 

1HE reprint of this lesson, from the Mas- 
ter Mind, December, 1917, is given by- 
request of several people who have writ- 
ten me letters telling of the help and 
healing which has been received, both 
' by reading the article and by earnestly 
putting into practice the denial of evil as sym- 
bolized by the Cross of Christ. 

One mother wrote of having healed her little 
boy of several severe attacks of illness through 
reading this lesson to him. 

With an earnest prayer that many will be 
blessed into health and aided in walking "The 
Way of Life," it now appears in a new dress 
as an Easter offering. 

Among the letters received is an interesting 
one from an Italian lady who gives the follow- 
ing account of her grandfather and his healing 
many people by the sign of the cross, which to- 
day is recognized as the denial of evil. 

"Grandfather was born with a very vivid cross on 

his tongue, but not until he had reached manhood did 

it dawn upon him that the cross meant that he was to 

heal the sick by making the sign of the cross. He soon 

5 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

became a great healer and people from cities and vil- 
lages for miles around would come to him to be healed 
of incurable diseases and growths. He used the sign 
of the cross and knew for them that "All is well." 
Once my sister took erysipelas so badly that her eyes 
were entirely closed and her suffering was great. Many 
miles had to be travelled to grandfather's house, but 
the moment he saw her, and made the sign of the cross, 
she was entirely free from pain and swelling. 

Perhaps you would be interested in hearing some- 
thing of his character. He was very spiritual. He 
seemed to live forever in a bright and happy region 
built up with his own thoughts and feelings. His peace 
and happiness were always quiet and poised. He never 
mingled with people except when called for healing. 
He had a large family of children, yet unlike the cus- 
tom of Italians, he never stored up wealth for them. 
The neighbors would often reproach him saying that 
he could with his healing power become a very wealthy 
man. His only answer was, "There is nothing to 
fear, my children will never want, my healing gift is 
directly from God and not to be entangled or abused 
with worldly aims. He often accepted love gifts from 
people. 

The people of the hamlets and villages situated 
among the hills and mountains of Northern Italy de- 
pend wholly on divine healers to cure their sick. A 
doctor or surgeon is almost unknown to them." 

HARRIET HALE RIX. 




BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

: OD is Health, the only power, presence 
and substance of the universe, Omnipo- 
tence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience. 
Man is the perfect Expression at all 
times, not because he affirms this, but at 
all times whether he affirms it or denies 
it, man is the true Expression of infinite, inde- 
structible, illimitable health. This Truth itself 
is of mighty healing value, and in order that we 
may stand absolutely by this affirmation, that 
has no reservation in it and admits of no com- 
promise, we must be able to take the negative 
stand, the purely negative stand, which consists 
in the non-recognition of two powers, two pres- 
ences and two substances. 

Since health is all in all, first, here and always 
supreme, there is no reality in disease. Disease 
does not exist in the realms of reality. It has 
no right, no authority, no claim, no power, pres- 
ence nor substance, since it has not God in it. 
It has no Truth in it, and having no Truth in 
it, it can make no scientific claim to being, there- 
7 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

fore the scientific mind denies disease, and un- 
derstands most intelligently the source of its 
divinity and the eternal indwelling of health. 

This Word of Denial is the great power of 
the Cross. And "By this sign we conquer." The 
sign of the cross, without which we truly can- 
not be Christians, nor can we understand the 
fullness of the power of the Word of God. 
Many people seem to fail on this point in the 
application of the principle of Christianity to 
healing : they will not deny — they will not can- 
cel nor cross out the belief in disease, materiality 
and evil. Sometimes people will say: 

"Oh, what is the use of denying — why not 
always affirm?" 

Yes, if affirmation always demonstrated the 
Truth to your consciousness and in your work 
(and then eternal affirmation has been admitted 
in the process of denial), but if the result is 
not perfect, pleasant and satisfactory after 
speaking the word of affirmation, better take 
up the practice of denial, and take it up very 
strongly. 

Instead of believing that denial is non-essen- 
tial, it is this state of mind, or believing, which 
needs it most. This one would gain emphat- 
ically by the practice of daily denial. Try it 
8 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

for yourself, and you will soon see how you 
speed on, how wonderfully you are vitalized in 
the divine consciousness. But let us always 
deny — let us use the cross — always — not under 
sad thought, but under the consciousness of its 
power, its victory. 

The history of the cross, as a symbol, is one 
of the most ancient — so ancient that it is impos- 
sible to trace it to its origin, by any written 
record, because the fact is that the cross exists 
in God. The cross is in God because for God 
to be all in all is to cancel forever all that is 
unlike His love, His goodness and His health, 
therefore the cross originates in being and is 
endless in its power. 

The cross has always been both feared and 
revered. Feared by cowards and selfish people, 
and sometimes by the religious in their ignor- 
ance ; revered always by that mind, understand- 
ing, illumined and united to, the great and full 
principles of Truth. Loved and revered 
through the ages it stands, the inspiration of cen- 
turies for a great many religious devotees and 
the saints and masters of the Christian history. 
As an emblem of a slave's death and a martyr's 
punishment, the cross for centuries was looked 
upon with repulsion, but this was redeemed and 
9 



BY THIS SIGX WE COXQUER 

the attitude of mind changed under Constan- 
tine, who, taking the cross, lifted it so high as 
a symbol of power and majesty, that since then 
it has been looked upon by the great and the 
knowing, as victorious. 

The origin of Constantine's great and won- 
drous interpretation of the cross was as fol- 
lows: "A flaming cross, blazing at noon-day 
appeared in the heavens once, when Constan- 
tine was on his way to conquer his enemies, 
with the words under it. f In hoc signo vinces* 
that is, 'By this sign conquer;' and the follow- 
ing night, in a dream, Christ appeared to Con- 
stantine directing him to use the cross as the 
symbol of his power and faith." 

He accordingly had a standard made bearing 
that sign, and a die cast, called labarum, with 
which to impress the coins and the armor of his 
soldiers. Since then the cross has been held in 
honor. 

Of late certain forms of the symbol have 
been brought forward, among them has been 
the favorite, called the swastika, which is sup- 
posed to bring great prosperity, because it rep- 
resents the four winds of success, and is a whirl- 
ing cross, very active, sweeping away all impuri- 
10 



. 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

ties and irregularities in its swing, and bringing 
to the one devoted to it all prosperity. 

Wagner in his opera of the Holy Grail, 
called "Parsifal," introduces the cross as a very 
strong note, teaching the power of Christian 
faith in demonstrating over all temptation, 
weakness and enmity. 

As he goes forth on his quest for the Holy 
Grail, or the great ultimate of life, Parsifal 
presents continually the cross, holding it up be- 
fore great temptation and darkness ; if he meets 
the devil, the devil hides before it, signifying 
his limitations and his self-conscious weakness 
in the face of the great Christian emblem. The 
nuns and monks of the Catholic church have 
adapted the cross in a more negative interpre- 
tation than other Christian churches by signify- 
ing their willingness to yield their whole person 
unto God in a kind of ceremonial dying, a volun- 
tary giving up, resembling the crucifixion of 
Jesus Christ. From this time forward they 
count themselves new beings endowed from God 
with special power to walk the way of a sinless, 
pure and wholesome life. 

Although there have been many tears shed 
in connection with the cross, today we are learn- 
ing to wipe away all tears, because the cross 
11 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

does not truly exist in its all-power save within 
the kingdom of joy. There it can be handled 
with demonstration and healing power. 

Healing is so simple, marvelously simple 
when you do it in the very best way. Your per- 
sonality knows nothing about it, because you 
have simply used the power of the cross, making 
a vacuum, a place for the great God to fill. An 
example of this is given in the following case: 

It was in San Francisco that this case came 
to me from Los Angeles. A man, a stranger to 
me, and whom I had never seen before, entered 
my room in San Francisco. In appearance he 
looked as if he would not outlive the day. He 
was a sorry sight of broken humanity, of the 
body come to the very edge of things. He told 
me some of his history. He could not talk 
much because, he said: 

"I am dying, but I must get home. Will you 
help me home? In Los Angeles they told me to 
stop here, and maybe you could give me the 
strength to get home and die there." 

When I spoke to him I pronounced the whole 
Truth in a general way. I knew he was not in 
a state to be lectured, so I just gave him a few 
loving words of doctrine. He said he had been 
sent to Los Angeles under charity, that his 
12 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

folks were poor and had gathered the funds 
for his railroad expenses and he had landed in 
that city with the idea of its healing properties. 
With nothing in his pockets he had searched for 
health for five months. He had tried, always 
under charity, all the schools and hospitals, and 
all medicines, but nothing helped him. He 
went down, down, down, because his complaint 
was called "consumption." The physicians had 
agreed that he would not live two weeks, and 
had advised him that, if he wished to die among 
his relatives, to take means to get home. An- 
other collection was made and he was started 
on his journey to his people, but obtained this 
"stop-over privilege." 

I took the stand, there is no incurable disease. 
That man had one treatment. I lifted the cross 
before him, not literally but figuratively, in word 
audible and in silent expression. I lifted it 
against this treacherous thing that had doomed 
him. It was lifted against this imposition that 
told him the end had come. 

I did not hear from that man for a year, then 
a woman came into my office and said: 

"I want to be healed as you healed Mr. 
Smith." 

13 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

I did not recollect the man's name. She 
said: 

"Yes, I want you to heal me in one treat- 
ment!" Then she went on to tell about this 
case, and because he had related his history, 
I remembered. Then she said: 

"He never coughed from the day he left 
your presence. He came home perfectly healed 
and everybody accepted him as though Los An- 
geles had healed him." 

And I give you this case as an illustration of 
the power of the cross, the uplifted cross, the 
cross of power. What had been crossed out? 
Weakness and belief in disease. One moment's 
true use of the cross, and a consumptive was 
restored to health. Did I do it? Why no. 
Was anything of disease really removed from 
this man? No, he was not diseased. He only 
believed he was. 

Now, my friends, everybody is always healed 
in the first treatment in Truth that he receives, 
but sometimes it takes sixty more treatments 
to educate him into knowing it, and if you were 
to take that stand, you would have many in- 
stantaneous healings and not drag your cases. 
Remember that. Healing is a consciousness. 

Now, let us consider the annulment of thev 

14 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

personality, but when I speak of that I am not 
speaking about the body. The body has been 
wronged by religion, by Christians who but 
partly understand Christianity, and therefore 
are ignorant concerning the body. I do not 
refer to your body at all when I speak of your 
personality. Your body is not miserable nor 
sick, it is your mind. Get rid of that kind of 
mind that makes you feel poor, weak and sick. 
The personality must be conquered. 

The personality is a way of thinking about 
yourself that has made all the misery and all 
the sickness, ache and trouble you have ever 
known or ever will know, therefore what do you 
want to keep the personality for? It has no 
existence. 

God is not personal, therefore let us rise right 
out of this wound to our consciousness, that we 
are something else than God because we are 
wicked, limited personality. Let us use the 
cross against this ignorant idea. This is what 
Jesus Christ meant by his great denial. By this 
sign I conquer the human tendency to believe 
that I can be something that God is not, or that 
I have the power to contradict God. With what 
power shall I contradict God since God is Om- 
nipotence and is all Individuality supreme? 
15 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

Jesus Christ cancelled his personality before all 
men, and this is recorded forever, that we may 
always walk in his way and gather to ourselves 
the consciousness of Individuality supreme. Let 
us use his long recognized power of cancelling 
the sins of separateness and weakness that are 
the under-self. For he says, "Why callest thou 
me good?" No personality can affirm what 
only God has a right to assert, therefore there 
is no goodness in personality — goodness mean- 
ing God. 

"I speak not of myself" when I say "I am 
health, life, joy, peace." I am not speaking of 
myself as separated from the whole. I "came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister," nor 
did I come into the world to be healed, but to 
heal. We are all capable of saying, "I came 
not into the world to be ministered unto — not 
to be healed, but from now on, I take the stand 
I have come to heal and to minister, powerfully 
and strongly and victoriously." You can be a 
healer at once, and then you will accept no weak 
sympathy for the human self, for the personal 
idea, it is obliterated for you in Truth. 

"I seek not my own honor," undoing a great 
cause of weakness and sickness, which is pride, 
arrogance, egotism. "Not my will, but thy will 

16 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

be done" is the Royal Way to full Godhood. 
You never get anything the other way, by in- 
sisting upon yourself as a separate being. What 
is the result? Are you satisfied? Are you 
happy about it? Are you contented? If not, 
try the other way, and plunge speedily into it. 
"Not my will, but thy will be done" — and you 
are using the power of the cross and you will 
conquer. You have conquered. 

So Jesus says, "If any man would come after 
me," up and up and up to the full resurrection, 
to the full manifestation, to the final conscious- 
ness of no man's need to go down into the grave 
or other hard and bitter experiences, or through 
the mud of ignorance or misery or disease, "If 
any man would come after me, let him take up 
his cross" (how many times, once in a while, 
once in a lifetime?) "let him take up his cross. 
daily and follow me." Oh, how that rings 
through your consciousness with joy when you 
openly practice it. It brings out the great power 
of the living Spirit. And Jesus says also : 

"Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer 
darkness." 

What is the outer darkness and who is the 
unprofitable servant? Do you know him? Just 
that part of your nature that has never yielded 
M 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

you any joy. Out of your consciousness you 
have the power to cast the spoiler. Who made 
this spoiler? Why, he never was created — only 
made to appear by yielding to his claims. Now 
we shall yield no more. I am not matter, I am 
Spirit. Lift the cross against the imposition of 
materiality. Use the sign of the cross against 
the world-wide impression that this is a ma- 
terialistic world with the power of evil ruling 
over it, filled with a sick-bound people as its 
guests. Take up your cross and deny it. Deny 
it for your neighbor — the war and every dis- 
ease — deny for everyone who comes to you de- 
scribing disease. Say "That is not so — that is 
not real," not aloud, but silently, powerfully. 
While they are speaking of error, the Truth 
there is voicing its Omnipresence, Omnipotence, 
Omniscience — giving the sign of the cross — 
"By this sign we conquer." 

A woman came to me — a skeptic — and she 
was an intellectual skeptic. She thought she 
could reason me out of my claim and out of my 
spiritual position. She had tried to several 
times, but the Spirit was very courteous to her, 
as it is always; it shines, you see, on the just and 
the unjust. How wonderful that it takes no 
cognizance that we have been stupid and dull 
is 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

and ignorant! It gives us beauty for ashes, joy 
for sorrow and love for hate. She showed me 
an arm with a growth on it; it appeared to be 
a tumor. I was busy. I had been making re- 
marks on the Truth and she showed me this 
arm. I remember she said: 

"If your Truth is all-powerful, heal that." I 
said: 

"Very well, it is healed," and made the sign 
of the cross over it — not in any superficial way. 

Time is nothing. I made the sign of the cross 
in faith. I did not care anything about her per- 
sonality nor what she was saying, for there in- 
stantly came a love over me for her, and so I 
took her hand and made with my finger the 
symbol of the cross and at the same time used 
my mind on that condition. 

She was the most amazed girl the next day, 
and she called me up, saying: 

"Why, Miss Rix, it worked — the tumor has 
entirely disappeared, not even does the place 
show that anything has ever been wrong there !" 
It never returned. 

Now, my friends, the great science of Christ 
demands your death. If you are going to reach 
the heights you must reach the depths. If you* 
cannot go down, you cannot go up. You must) 

19 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

be free at both ends. If you can utterly die, you 
can utterly live. That is why we are presented 
with the cross as the only means of conquering 
a self that is not God. Now what dies ? There 
is no death and nobody has ever died, and no- 
body ever will die, but there is that other death 
that is honorable, the honor of the God within 
you — the only death that is worth while. It is 
the voluntary death which is the larger death — 
much larger than physical death, and when that 
is accomplished it is finished, never again pain, 
never again sickness, no more fear, no more 
misery, but peace forever. 

George Mueller, that wonderful man who 
lived in London and instituted under faith a 
home for newsboys — poor, little, ragged news- 
boys ! Oh, I saw them in London by the hun- 
dreds. We have none like them here in Los 
Angeles or New York. They never had a roof 
over their heads. They never sat down to a 
table, and this great, loving God-Man reared 
them himself. He soon had 2000 orphans, giv- 
ing them plenty to eat and wear, and good beds, 
through faith and love and trust. Someone 
asked this man once to give the secret of his 
demonstrations, because he could heal as well 
as provide for the hungry. I think it is worth 

20 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

reading to you. It does me good always to read 
it myself and to meditate upon, because it is a 
means of grace to me. Here it is: 

"There was a day when I utterly died," and as he 
spoke these words he bent forward, lower and lower, 
until his head almost touched the floor. "Died to 
George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and 
will — died to the world, its approval and censure, died 
to the blame or approval of brothers and friends, and 
since then I have studied to show myself approved of 
God." 

And he had a broad and wide spiritual experi- 
ence and consciousness of what it means to walk 
with God in the victory of Truth. 

Health is established by denial. It is not 
acquired by affirmation; and there is no disease 
destroyed by denial. You simply deny or de- 
stroy the belief in disease, and that establishes, 
to your consciousness, your health — and that 
health is the royal, splendid inheritance of the 
sons of God, the power of an Omnipresent God 
to His loving children. 

Moses lifted up a cross in the wilderness. 
The cross did not originate with Jesus, with 
Christianity. Christianity adopted it and used 
it as a great symbol of annihilating whatever 
was in the way on the path of reaching the 
21 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

infinite goodness and power of God. Moses 
was himself instructed to lift up a cross in the 
wilderness and to place on it the serpent, which 
in this state of consciousness was the symbol of 
deception and ignorance, disease and death, but 
he was to lift up the serpent until the serpent on 
the cross would be transmuted, and thereafter 
stand for the w T isdom and for the power that 
conquers. He did so, and as you know the 
history of those Israelites who were bitten 
through their denial of God, and therefore had 
diseases of mind, body and estate, — who had 
been bitten by the idea of mortality, personality, 
fear, anxiety, and belief in evil — everyone who 
looked became consecrated and made their at- 
one-ment with the lifted serpent, the transmuta- 
tion of the consciousness, and they were healed. 
When the prince of this world comes to you 
he must find nothing in you — nothing of his 
own, then you can look upon all evil as so much 
nothingness, and you can handle disease and 
have no repugnance in your mind, no picture left 
to make you shudder, no fear in your soul of 
whatsoever you know is non-existent. You 
have, by the power of the cross, re-entered the 
path of innocence and therefore all power and 
all joy. "All power," Jesus Christ said, "is ; 
22 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

given unto me in heaven and on earth," but not 
until the cross had brought the great victory. 
It was when the love of the Master had met 
every claim of error that he stepped forth and 
affirmed the full victory of man. 

As we take hold of the Truth, that all power 
on earth and in heaven is given unto the resur- 
rection, so shall we pass from death to life. 
Our word becomes power to pass through every 
ignorance to knowledge, every sorrow to joy. 



23 



Y THIS S I G X WE CO X OVER 



TREATMENT 

Enter into the quiet of your own souls. Dis- 
miss all thought about things, about yourself. 
about conditions that have seemed adverse to 
your happiness and your freedom, whether they 
are called disease, inharmony. poverty, death, 
or whatever. "Be still and knovc that I am 
God," is the divine instruction. 

And now as you rest in the Divine Presence, 
you remember who you are, the perfect child of 
God. pure Spirit. There is nothing material 
about you. You are not a mere personality-, nor 
is it true that you are a sinner or selfish or evil 
in any way. You are the image, the likeness of 
God. therefore holy as God is holy, perfect as 
God is perfect, the manifestation of health, life 
and strength, and of the beauty- and grace of 
God. This is the Truth of your real Self. 

We utterlv denv that there is any self but this 
God-Self. All the appearance of weakness and 
foolishness is nothing, nothing at all. It is not 
real. You are surrounded by the Divine Pres- 
ence, by good, by harmony, by heaven, and you 
led with health, and heaven centers within 
you and radiates from you into all your world, 

24 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

one Power working in and through you. It 
works for life, it works for freedom, it works 
for health and happiness and every blessing. 

One substance is in your world, one substance 
makes your body, it is the sweet, wholesome, 
clean and pure substance of Spirit, ideal, eternal, 
perfect, beautiful, immortal. "No evil can 
come nigh thy dwelling, no weapon that is 
formed against thee can prosper, for thou shalt 
be in league with the stones of the field; and the 
beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." 

Now you are resting in the Truth and you 
rise in the health, the abounding health of God, 
and you walk with God, you walk in the strength 
of Christ. You can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth you. Nothing is 
impossible to you — nothing is incurable. You 
are God's instrument to radiate health. You 
are here to manifest fullness of health, to love 
— to give the Truth to the world and to heal. 
It is true of you what Jesus Christ said of him- 
self: 

"To this end was I born and for this cause 
came I into the world, that I might bear wit- 
ness unto the Truth." 

Now you bear witness to the Truth with your 
body, it is healthy, strong, young and free. You 

25 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

bear witness to the Truth with your mind, it is 
clear, balanced, positive, wise. You bear wit- 
ness in every way that Truth is here, that God is 
here, that heaven is now upon the earth and you 
live in it, forever and ever. , 



TREATMENT FOR THE ABSENT 

Now let us open the flood gates. We are so 
filled with true, beautiful, wonderful conscious- 
ness. We are all ready to take into it those 
whom we have been blessing and holding up to 
the heights for the last few days. Let us first 
apply the great denial to these. Take each one 
by name, and we will rest a few moments while 
you repeat that name so as to become very much 
at-one with them. Slowly repeat them. 

Dear one, listen to me ! I deny that your per- 
sonality has power to stand between you and 
the whole Truth. I deny that mind that asserts 
pain, sickness, weakness, poverty or fear. 
Within yourself, I deny the personal claim of 
weakness and old age. I, the very presence of 
God within you, deny anxiety, fear, and weak- 
ness. Thus the sense of a personal self is ob- 
literated and fades away into nothingness, and 
the Holy Spirit of the Divine Self fills you con- 
sciously. 

26 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

You are alive with the life of God, strong 
with the strength of realization, peaceful in the 
peace that passeth human understanding, a 
peace all-active and all-knowing. 

You are crowned, the Holy One of God. 
Joy flows through you. Rising, it lifts you to 
the Highest — your Holy Self. You are free, 
free, and it sings itself, this paean of praise, this 
wondrous sense of life, it sings itself into com- 
plete expression. You are free, holy, as God 
made you, steady, divine, glorious ! And now, 
O Father, glorify thou this one with the glory 
he had with Thee before the world was ! 

THOU HAST GLORIFIED HIM WITH) 
THINE OWN SELF. 



27 



BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 



THE UNREALITY OF EVIL 

"In an address delivered before the senior 
class in Divinity College, Cambridge, July 15, 
1838 (long before the modern schools that are 
based on the denial of evil existed) Emerson 
said: 'Good is positive. Evil is merely priva- 
tive, not absolute, it is like cold, which is the 
privation of heat. All evil then, is so much 
death or non-entity.' " 

Athanasius, who was called "The father of 
orthodoxy," and who died in the year 373, said, 
"For evils must be called non-existent, but good 
is really existent, as having God for its true 
author." 

Last words of Guatama Buddha: "Spirit is 
the sole, elementary and primordial unity. Each 
of its rays is the immortal, infinite, indestructible 
soul of man. Spirit is the only reality. Beware 
of the illusions of matter." 



Eliphas 


Levi has 


said, 


"Allow 


no re 


ial 


exist- 




ence to evil 


. God in 


fact, 


does not will 


it. 


Na- 








28 





























BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

ture rejects it; suffering protests against it; rea- 
sonable beings cannot desire it; universal har- 
mony leaves no place for it; life triumphs con- 
tinually over it as over death. Satan cannot, 
therefore, be a king; he is the most abject slave 
of the folly he has evoked. The eternal denial 
of evil consists in the eternal triumph of good." 

From Zoroaster: "The first best, highest 
place he (God, Ormuzd) created was the All 
Possibility and the second best, highest place he 
created was the All Good. With him are all 
things possible, with him are all things good." 

Jesus' Definition of Evil 
"He, (the devil or composite of evil) was 
a murderer from the beginning, and abode not 
in the truth, because there is no truth in him. 
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own : 
for he is a liar and the father of it." John 8 :44. 

Both Dionysius and Plotinus have said in 
substance : 

"The Good and Beautiful are the cause of 
all things that are and all things love and aspire 
to the Good and Beautiful. 

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God is the Being of all that is. Since then, 
Being is identical with God or Goodness, evil 
as such, does not exist. Evil is not in things 
which exist; a good tree cannot bear evil fruit. 
Nor is evil in God nor of God; nor in the 
angels; nor in the soul; nor in the brutes; nor 
in inanimate nature." 

Origin declares of evil, "Everything spir- 
itual is indestructible; and therefore every spirit 
must at last return to the Good. For the Good 
alone exists; evil has no existence, no substance." 

St. Augustine' s Soliloquie, Book 7 : "And I 
sought, whence is evil. I set before the eye of 
my spirit the whole creation; whatsoever we see 
therein — sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral crea- 
tures — yea, whatsoever there is we do not see — 
angels and spiritual powers. Where is evil and 
whence comes it, since God, the Good hath cre- 
ated all things? Why made he anything at all 
of evil and not rather by his almightiness cause 
it not to be? These thoughts I turned in my 
miserable heart, overcharged with most gnaw- 
ing cares, and admonished to return to myself, 
I entered even into my inmost soul, Thou being 

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BY THIS SIGN WE CONQUER 

my guide, and beheld even beyond my soul and 
mind, the Light unchangeable. He who knows 
the Truth knows what the Light is, and he who 
knows it knows Eternity. 

O, Truth, who art Eternity ! Love, who art 
Truth ! Eternity who art Love ! And I be- 
held that thou madest all things good, and to 
Thee is nothing whatsoever evil. From the 
angel to the worm, from the first motion to the 
last, Thou settest each in its place, and every- 
thing is good in its kind. Woe is me : how high 
art Thou in the highest, how deep in the deep- 
est, and Thou never departest from us." 




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